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Small set of fossil fuel producers may be key to tackling climate change

Just 100 companies have been the source of more than 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a new report.

The Carbon Majors Report “pinpoints how a relatively small set of fossil fuel producers may hold the key to systemic change on carbon emissions,” says Pedro Faria, technical director at environmental non-profit CDP, which published the report in collaboration with the Climate Accountability Institute.

Photo kris krügAccording to a new report, 100 companies are responsible for more than 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.

Traditionally, large scale greenhouse gas emissions data is collected at a national level but this report focuses on fossil fuel producers. Compiled from a database of publicly available emissions figures, it is intended as the first in a series of publications to highlight the role companies and their investors could play in tackling climate change.

The report found that more than half of global industrial emissions since 1988 — the year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was established — can be traced to just 25 corporate and state-owned entities. The scale of historical emissions associated with these fossil fuel producers is large enough to have contributed significantly to climate change, according to the report.

ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron are identified as among the highest emitting investor-owned companies since 1988. If fossil fuels continue to be extracted at the same rate over the next 28 years as they were between 1988 and 2017, says the report, global average temperatures would be on course to rise by 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. This is likely to have catastrophic consequences including substantial species extinction and global food scarcity risks.

While companies have a huge role to play in driving climate change, says Faria, the barrier is the “absolute tension” between short-term profitability and the urgent need to reduce emissions.

A Carbon Tracker study in 2015 found that fossil fuel companies risked wasting more than $2 trillion over the coming decade by pursuing coal, oil, and gas projects that could be worthless in the face of international action on climate change and advances in renewables — in turn posing substantial threats to investor returns.

CDP says its aims with the carbon majors project are both to improve transparency among fossil fuel producers and to help investors understand …more

A conversation with Myron Dewey, co-director of Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock

Myron Dewey is a Paiute-Temoke Shoshone filmmaker who co-directed Awake, A Dream from Standing Rock with Academy Award and Emmy nominee James Spione and Oscar nominee Josh Fox. Awake documents the struggle of Indigenous water protectors at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota as they gathered for much of last year to prevent the Dakota Access Pipeline from being constructed beneath the Missouri River.

Photo courtesy of Awakethefilm.org Awake tells the story of Native-led resistence to the Dakota Access Pipeline and the ways in which it changed the fight for clean water and the environment.

Dewey brought an Indigenous sensibility to his segment of Awake, as he has to his previous groundbreaking body of work, which includes Mni Wiconi, which is also about Standing Rock. According to Fox, Dewey’s production company, Digital Smoke Signals, was “livestreaming from Standing Rock every day, flying their drones over the pipeline and protests.”

“They got lots of followers on Facebook because they outperformed the mass media,” he adds. “Where CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News failed to bring you the stories, Digital Smoke Signals succeeded. The Indigenous Environmental Network succeeded. The outfits that were on the ground, we were bringing things independently that the mass media wasn’t reporting.”

In October of last year, Dewey was charged with a misdemeanor for live streaming drone footage of security forces hired by Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. His case goes to trial July 12.

When I spoke with Dewey by phone, he was somewhere in the mid-West. Asked about his location, the activist-director replied: “I’m en route. I usually don’t let people know where I am due to safety reasons.” In this candid conversation Dewey discusses everything from Hollywood’s depiction of Indigenous people, to the Standing Rock struggle, to his pending court case.

How did you get into filmmaking?

It was an epiphany. Our [Indigenous] stories weren’t accurately being told. I went for my undergraduate at Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, that’s where I became awakened in many different forms — not just consciousness, but emotional, historical trauma, education, and history. There was so much I needed to learn — for example, why I was angry at the things I could not articulate at that time. I try to articulate that anger and help our youth do the same... so they can move forward and help the community around them heal.

Government agencies are coming together to protect the small amphibian, which is only found in Shenandoah National Park

Deep within the ancient Appalachian mountains of Shenandoah National Park lies a creature that can only be found on three of its highest peaks, the fittingly named Shenandoah salamander (Plethodon shenandoah). This rare black and orange salamander, which is a remnant of the Pleistocene, has managed to survive in a unique ecological niche even as amphibians across globe are in decline. But with new threats emerging, scientists are coming together to help save this remarkable creature.

Photo Mark Hendricks The Shenandoah salamander is only found within the highest elevation parts of Shenandoah National Park.

“It is a really old species,” says Dr. Evan Grant, principal investigator of the Unites States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative. So old that in fact its divergence from a common ancestor with its closest relative, the eastern red backed salamander, is thought to have occurred over five million years ago. “It’s amazing that it has persisted for so long,” adds Grant.

The Shenandoah salamander is a member of the family Plethodontidae, colloquially known as the lungless salamanders, which breathe entirely through their skin and typically require damp environments to facilitate respiration. However, the high elevation talus habitat where the Shenandoah salamander lives is dry. So how did it end up there? It is believed that the Shenandoah salamander is a relict adapted to the cooler climate afforded by the highest elevations in the park. This need for a cool climate — combined with competition from the eastern red-backed salamander, a much more common, closely related species that has expanded its’ range into higher elevation habitats since the end of the Pleistocene — has restricted the Shenandoah salamander to only a handful of the highest elevation parts in the park. As a result, the salamander has one of the smallest ranges of any tetrapod, perhaps the smallest.

Photo Mark Hendricks Shenandoah salamanders live in dry talus slopes in three high-elevation parts of Shenandoah National Park. The habitat is primarily characterized by rocks and moist soil pockets.

Because of its limited habitat, presumed competition with eastern red-backed salamanders, and concerns about habitat loss, the Shenandoah salamander was listed as endangered in 1987 by the Commonwealth of Virginia and was federally listed in 1989. In 1994 the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) published the recovery plan for the species. At that time, competition with the eastern red-backed salamander was believed to be …more

A reflection on the ten-year struggle against a joint US-South Korean naval base on Jeju Island

Why did you burn my Farm and my town down? I've got to know, friend, I've got to know.

— Woody Guthrie

Ten years ago, in the small coastal fishing and farming village of Gangjeong on Jeju Island, South Korea, the Korean government made a deal to construct a joint United States-South Korea naval base. The base would be located at the site of a beautiful volcanic rock plateau called Gureombi. For centuries the villagers in Gangjeong revered this rock formation, protecting it, laying in its warm streams and pools, sharing food, and holding ceremonies there.

Photo courtesy of Joyakgol Local activists protest the construction of a joing US-South Korea naval base on Jeju Island.

Five years ago, against the protests of hundreds — in the village and internationally — police stood guard as contracted workers dynamited this sacred site, beginning construction of the base. From the other side of the razor wires, the villagers watched in despair as a crucial cultural landmark was (almost entirely) blown to bits. Then came the endless procession of cement trucks, dumping load after load of concrete over the mangled remains of Gureombi, smothering memories as well as the habitats of endangered species of crab and frog, destroying the breeding ground for thousands of shellfish and seaweeds, and decimating what was once an important foraging ground for villagers. (Read more about the impacts of the base here.)

Over the course of the resistance, hundreds of people — from international activists to mainland Koreans standing in solidarity with the villagers, to the villagers themselves, including the former mayor and numerous Gangjeong elders — have been arrested for impeding the base’s completion. At times more than one thousand police — many from the mainland — have been sent in to Gangjeong to ensure the construction of the base continued, views of the locals be dammed.

Last year the naval base opened. And in March of 2017, the first US Navy vessel docked at Jeju, followed by a second one just last week.

Why has all this happened? Why have sacred sites and vital habitat been destroyed?

Gureombi, and the villagers themselves, had the misfortune of being in the way of progress.

In this case, progress meant a massive new naval base complete with warships. It also seemed …more

Companies estimate 30 percent chance of damage to the newly discovered ecosystem in event of a spill

Oil companies planning to drill near a vast coral reef at the mouth of the Amazon river have calculated that the unique ecosystem has a 30 percent chance of being affected in the event of an oil spill.

Photo Jeso Carneiro Oil companies may start drilling near the newly discovered Amazon river reef as early as this summer.

In February BP told The Guardian it planned to start drilling a block it controls by August 2018. Brazilian company Queiroz Galvão also has a block it expects to start drilling from next year.

The unique reef system astonished marine biologists when its existence was widely revealed last year, and is believed it could be the home for dozens of previously unknown species. (Read Earth Island Journal’s report about the discovery here.) But activists warn that an oil spill could irreparably damage the 1,000 kilometer-long ecosystem before scientists have even had a chance to study it.

“It’s unlike any other reef that we know about,” said Sara Ayech, an oil campaigner at the London offices of Greenpeace. “If the companies drill there’s a risk of an oil spill and if an oil spill hits the reef, then we could see parts of it destroyed before we even document them.”

The Brazilian government has estimated that the Foz de Amazonas, or Amazon Mouth area, could hold 15.6 billion barrels of oil. A consortium of oil companies led by French giant Total, and including BP and Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras, snapped up five exploration blocks in the area when they were auctioned off in 2013.

In January, Total said it had begun moving equipment to the Amazon area and planned to start drilling this year. The oil reservoirs it hopes to reach are situated in 1,900 meters of water, nearly 200 kilometers from the coast.

Scientists from Greenpeace examined the publicly-available Environmental Impact Study Total submitted to the Brazilian authorities and found references to the possibility of an oil spill reaching the reef.

Reef structures in the area to be drilled “present possibilities of being impacted by oil,” the study said. In winter that possibility could be as high as 30.33 percent, while in summer, 20.93 percent, the study produced for Total by companies Proceano and AECOM said.

As long ago as the 1970s, scientists suspected the existence of a reef hidden under the murky waters of the River Amazon’s mouth. But it was not …more

We know climate change is affecting the environment, but it’s also threatening people’s health

I’m digging through reports and punditry to make sense of health care reform when I realize that while we’ve been debating single-payer systems and high-risk pools, no one’s talking about the most serious health threat: climate change.

I know what global warming is doing to our ecosystems. My Twitter feed is a stream of climate disaster revelations. Given the serious implications droughts, floods, and fires pose to our health, shouldn’t climate change be part of the health care discussions?

Photo Tomás Fano Preparing to protect people from the effects of climate change requires a robust health care system.

Howard Frumkin thinks so. He is a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington School of Public Health, and, by his measure, climate change is the greatest public health threat of our time.

Here’s his perspective on how climate change fits into the latest governmental health care battles.

Stephen Miller: What’s your sense of where we’re at with the current health care bill?

Howard Frumkin: Obamacare isn’t perfect. It’s a cumbersome system. It was a lot better than the status quo; tens of millions of people who were not insured got insurance. The Republican plan would undo that. It’s grotesquely unjust. If you view health care as a right, then it’s exactly the wrong way to go. We do need to reform Obamacare, we need to reduce costs in the system and enhance quality, and we need to achieve universal access.

What kind of health care bill is needed in a world with a changing climate?

In general, preparing to protect people from the effects of climate change means we need a robust health system. That means we need strong health departments that have the ability to do epidemiologic surveillance and do disaster preparedness. And do good communication and education. We need a medical care system that is available to everybody.

Climate change as a risk aggravator — or risk multiplier —makes those things all the more necessary. Anything you do to undercut those things in either the public health system or the clinical care system makes us less able to respond to climate change.

So, if you restrict the level of clinical care that’s available to people, and that’s exactly what these proposed Medicaid cuts would do, then all of the adverse health effects of climate change will hit the population. The poor people who will need medical …more

Proposed prison would have been terrible for prisoner health and local wildlife, say advocates

Last month the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) withdrew its request for funding for construction of a maximum-security prison atop a former mountaintop-removal coal-mining site in eastern Kentucky.

The proposed $444 million facility, planned for Letcher County, has faced ongoing opposition from environmental and human rights organizations who have expressed a wide range of concerns about potential ecological and health impacts of the project. “Building this prison would have been terrible for the health of prisoners, the surrounding community, and all the wildlife in the area,” Lori Ann Bird, environmental health program director with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, said. (Read Earth Island Journal and Truthout’s special investigation into America’s toxic prisons.)

The Human Rights Defense Center, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of people held in US detention facilities, pointed to the history of mining-related pollution in the area — including contamination of drinking water that could be used for the prison. The Human Rights Defense Center also noted the ongoing risk posed by more than a dozen active gas wells near the proposed site, as well as possible radon intrusion linked to coal mining in the area.

Photo by Dennis Dimick A mountaintop-removal coal mine near Charleston, West Virginia. The DOJ recently withdrew its request for funding for a prison on a mountaintop removal site in eastern Kentucky.

In a comment filed in response to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) 2015 environmental impact statement for the facility, opponents also cited impacts on the local community — including potential water pollution from the prison itself — as well as on nearby habitat and wildlife. Two federally endangered species, the Indiana bat and the gray bat, are found in the region, as are some 60 other species with varying levels of state and federal protections.

“It’s a pretty huge step toward victory,” Panagioti Tsolkas, cofounder of the Prison Ecology Project, a program of the Human Rights Defense Center, said of the DOJ’s decision to abandon the plan.

Both the Prison Ecology Project and the Center for Biological Diversity point to growing local opposition, in conjunction with a coordinated campaign by advocates, as triggering the withdrawal. “This has been a tremendous effort by a lot of diverse groups coming together to oppose this prison, and shows the powerful impact we can achieve when the community comes …more